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With a focus on federal courts and the public, this website reveals the different ways the federal courts affect the lives of U.S. citizens and how those citizens interact with the courts.
When the legal facts of one case are the same as the legal facts of another,
stare decisis dictates that they should be decided the same way, and judges are reluctant to disregard precedent without justification. However, that does not mean there is no flexibility or that new precedents or rulings can never be created. They often are. Certainly, court interpretations can change as times and circumstances change—and as the courts themselves change when new judges are selected and take their place on the bench. For example, the membership of the Supreme Court had changed entirely between
Plessey v. Ferguson (1896), which brought the doctrine of “separate but equal” and
Brown v.
Board of Education (1954), which required integration.
Plessy v. Ferguson , 163 U.S. 537 (1896);
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka , 347 U.S. 483 (1954).
Judges fulfill a vital role in the U.S. judicial system and are carefully selected. At the federal level, the president nominates a candidate to a judgeship or justice position, and the nominee must be confirmed by a majority vote in the U.S. Senate, a function of the Senate’s “advice and consent” role. All judge s and justices in the national courts serve lifetime terms of office.
The president sometimes chooses nominees from a list of candidates maintained by the
American Bar Association , a national professional organization of lawyers.
American Bar Association Coalition for Justice. 2008. “Judicial Selection.” In
American Bar Association , eds. American Judicature Society and Malia Reddick. http://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/migrated/JusticeCenter/Justice/PublicDocuments/judicial_selection_roadmap.authcheckdam.pdf. The president’s nominee is then discussed (and sometimes hotly debated) in the
Senate Judiciary Committee . After a committee vote, the candidate must be confirmed by a majority vote of the full Senate. He or she is then sworn in, taking an oath of office to uphold the Constitution and the laws of the United States.
When a vacancy occurs in a lower federal court, by custom, the president consults with that state’s U.S. senators before making a nomination. Through such senatorial courtesy , senators exert considerable influence on the selection of judges in their state, especially those senators who share a party affiliation with the president. In many cases, a senator can block a proposed nominee just by voicing his or her opposition. Thus, a presidential nominee typically does not get far without the support of the senators from the nominee’s home state.
Most presidential appointments to the federal judiciary go unnoticed by the public, but when a president has the rarer opportunity to make a Supreme Court appointment, it draws more attention. That is particularly true now, when many people get their news primarily from the Internet and social media. It was not surprising to see not only television news coverage but also blogs and tweets about President Obama ’s most recent nominees to the high court, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan ( [link] ).
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